Sixteen years ago the only plan Barrie Mills had to celebrate his 70th birthday was to watch Survivor on TV, but now he has far more options. It was 1999, just a few months away from celebrating the new millennium, and the heavy-set Surrey resident was waiting at a transit stop when a weight-loss advertisement caught his eye.

The plan was to experience B.C. as a tourist would, so making it authentic meant a start at YVR airport. As I packed my bags for my four-day assignment, I had dreaded the stay in a noisy airport hotel eating cold room-service food.

Whistler has the biggest proportion - about half - of residents who are binge drinkers, out-guzzling residents in all 29 other communities, according to the largest-health survey ever in B.C. Squamish was a close second with about a third of respondents saying they binge drink at least once a month. Richmond and Langley have the lowest proportion of binge drinkers - 15 per cent.

Conversations about the impact of provincial ferry fare policy are always replete with statistics, micro-economics, price caps and so on. How about stories of real people? Here’s Sharlene Lazin. She and her husband moved to Mayne Island eight years ago because Metro’s living costs proved prohibitive on their small pensions.

Rather than inject uncertainty into how governments deal with Indian governments, the ruling helps define for the first time ever how they can work together, Tsilhqot'in leaders told the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention.

From bunny sterilization to energy drinks for kids, the UBCM has been mired in discussions of non-municipal issues. Now, there's talk of changing the process and knocking off both frivolous and unattainable resolutions.

Samuel and Grace Whitelock were married on Jan. 5, 1963, but after 47 years of dysfunction and struggle, Grace drove off in their 2001 Volvo to attend church and never returned. With that introduction worthy of a hurtin’ country song, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Linda Loo laid out the sad story of an immigrant Scottish family rent asunder by violence, divorce and illiteracy.

Odds are, when most Lower Mainlanders contemplate Point Roberts, they probably think of a geographical anomaly: a sleepy, five-square-mile chunk of the U.S. that's accessible to motorists only through the border at the south end of Tsawwassen, a place to collect shipped-in parcels or to fill up on cheaper gas.

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